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[–]slushpilot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Tell her how you're scared it will affect your friendship.

How you won't be able to open up to her about the things you always have, because it's hard to trust men with some of those intimate conversations that they'll never understand. And if she's going to be a man now...

Or how she'll just want to spend her time watching the football game and hanging out in the garage drinking beer with the guys instead of scrapbooking over a shared bottle of wine like you always have. She can't do those things if she's going to be a man now...

Or how she'll make fun of the "trashy" novel that you're reading or the "chick" movie you watched. Since she's going to be a man now...

Or, if that all sounds ridiculous and she's not actually going to start being a stereotype—then ask her—what's changing!? Certainly not her biology. Her clothes, then? Her hair and fingernails? She was always free to change those. But if that's all that remains then that's a stupid reason to start calling herself a man!

But seriously now, I wish you luck with this situation. It sounds tricky, but maybe there's hope you can get through to her and help her talk through this as a friend, one to one. However, there might be more to this if you're able to dig deeper with her: it's not at all typical for someone of her age to just decide something like this—she's not some impressionable kid! I would suspect there's some trauma or other reasons—does she really want to be seen as a man, or rather, to not be seen as a woman?

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Like most people of both sexes, she already likes a combination of traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine things. I think she feels like being seen as a man will make her feel better about herself. And I mean, it might work. But, as I said above, she spends a lot of time with much-younger friends and she tends to be influenced by people she spends time with.

[–]slushpilot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Right—that was part of my whole point too: she probably wasn’t a perfect representation of femininity to start with. Nobody is.